WI: Athens Totally Destroyed by the Spartans and Friends?

[Gosing]

This is one of the Peloponnesian War PoDs that I might do a TL on eventually...

Basically, after the final surrender of Athens and he allies to the Peleponnesians in 404 B.C, there was a sizeable faction among the victors (including Sparta's biggest allies, Corinth and Thebes) that Athens should be subjected to a classic full-on sacking-the city burned and laid waste, the treasures stolen, the adult males slaughtered, the rest of the population consigned to slavery and probably raped-the works. Ultimately, a more moderate faction won over, and Athens was let off with having its walls torn down and having a pro-Spartan regime forced on them.

But what if, for whatever reason, the more radical faction wins out, and Athens is laid waste? How does this effect post-Peleponnesian Greek history?

 

[Daeres]

With Athens dies Socrates, Plato, and most likely Aristotle. At the very least you just killed off the whole Western philosophical tradition .

 

[Alex Richards]

Sparta gets the blame, seeing as they didn't go in for writing histories they can't argue back, and we perhaps see a slight shift in attitudes, Sparta compared with Persia who had done the same thing when they captured the city. We may have an attitude today at least that the Spartans were 'little more than Barbarians with a Greek visage' using this as an example and the lack of culture as further evidence.

In the immediate term, there's little really that Sparta can do to avoid her steep decline, short of actions that would be thought as completely unspartan, and I'd expect to see a much smaller Athens reestablished around the Acropolis and old Agora. The Parthenon itself might just be deroofed and stripped of treasure, along with the other temples on the Acropolis, and may eventually be reroofed as a humbler building. Thebes probably becomes the cultural and political centre of Greece, though if we see anything like the Macedonian hegemony Athens could be partially rebuilt to create a local state freindly to Macedon.

 

[Infinity]

This would completely change the power dynamics in the Mediterranean sea. Another power would most likely rise to supremacy. Perhaps the Phoenicians. Maybe the Carthaginians. Even Egyptians may become more prominent in the sea.

Philip, Alexander, and Macedonian imperialism would be butterflied away. The Persian empire may increase its hegemony. Persia may incorporate the Indus valley, Greece, and Egypt into its kingdom. Although more likely it would fracture into feudalism before that occurred.

 

[CandyDragon]

This would completely change the power dynamics in the Mediterranean sea. Another power would most likely rise to supremacy. Perhaps the Phoenicians. Maybe the Carthaginians. Even Egyptians may become more prominent in the sea.

Philip, Alexander, and Macedonian imperialism would be butterflied away. The Persian empire may increase its hegemony. Persia may incorporate the Indus valley, Greece, and Egypt into its kingdom. Although more likely it would fracture into feudalism before that occurred.

Where are you pulling Persian expansionism from the abortion of the rise of Macedon? Persia at that point was nearly falling apart due to a lack of centralization. They're not going to be conquering the Indus Valley, nor Greece.

 

[Infinity]

Cultural Shift

Where are you pulling Persian expansionism from the abortion of the rise of Macedon? Persia at that point was nearly falling apart due to a lack of centralization. They're not going to be conquering the Indus Valley, nor Greece.

Yet they didn't fall apart by their own means. Darius seemed to have considerable support. He would have been assassinated much sooner if Persia truly was failing. With a weakened Athens, and a culturally weakened Greece, there may be a rise in Zoroastrianism, and subsequently a stronger more unified Persian empire.

 

[Daeres]

Indeed, the period around Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian Empire was actually fairly unremarkable for the Achaemenids up until that point, they weren't particularly weak compared to any other point in their history nor were they suffering any unusual crises; the idea that the Achaemenid Empire was weakening is a theme introduced by some Greek literature at the time and doesn't reflect reality.